The Poet's Last Word

Cease! here a dry-tongued, weeping child sucks his dead mother's
empty breast;
Here a soot-blackened street-waif labors, hollow-eyed for want of rest;
Here an unwanted, unloved beggar clutches his rags against the cold:
See! his empty eyes roll upward, there where myriad worlds have
rolled –
Can hollowness grow hollow? well might his, if he would learn
That those worlds of silv'ry promise all roll onward but to burn.
Hope is a cheat in a world of cheats; I will see this cheat Hope dead –
As empty as all those mocked by her – ere the laurel comes back on my
head.
Cease! shall I sing you a happy song? it is a mockery:
If I sing, let it be the way things are – not the way they ought to be.
What shall I sing you? a pretty girl? eyes bright, cheeks rosy, lips full –
How fair! but alas, it is but a flesh-mask, stretched on a death's-head
skull.
So would it be if I sang to please you, sang you a happy song –
Ask me not (Friend!) with my rosy words to paint this death-world
wrong,
Or ask if you will – this poet is dead; these lips the world's breast has
left dry:
En Cristoiii is all my un-poet-like plea, sola gratiaiv my last fainting cry.